Few details are known about the film's plot or cast, including which actors, if any, might return for the sequel. Director Roland Emmerich confirmed that a number of the original film's characters do pop up in the script written by Dean Devlin and himself.

The original film's combined domestic and international box office gross is $816,969,268, which, at the time, was the second-highest worldwide gross of all time. It is currently the 38th-highest-grossing film of all time and was at the forefront of the large-scale disaster film and science fiction resurgences of the mid-to-late-1990s. It won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, and was also nominated for Best Sound Mixing.